roads would be like if the Western front were actually broken. Guns of
every caliber from the 75's to the 120's and 240's, ammunition pack
trains, ambulances horse-drawn and motor-drawn, big and little motor
trucks, staff officers' cars, cycle riders and motor cycle riders, small
two-wheeled carts, all were mixed with the flow of infantry going and
coming and crowding the road-menders off the road.
There was none of the stateliness of the columns of British motor trucks
and none of the rigidity of British marching. It all seemed a great
family affair. When one wondered what part any item of the variegated
transport played it was always promptly explained.
Officers and men exchanged calls of greeting as they passed. Eyes were
flashing to the accompaniment of gestures. There were arguments about
right of way in which the fellow with the two-wheeled cart held his own
with the chauffeur of the three-ton motor truck. But the argument was
accompanied by action. In some cases it was over, a decision made and
the block of traffic broken before a phlegmatic man could have had
discussion fairly under way. For Frenchmen are nothing if not quick of
mind and body and whether a Frenchman is pulling or pushing or driving
he likes to express the emotions of the moment. If a piece of transport
were stalled there would be a chorus of exclamations and running
disputes as to the method of getting it out of the rut, with the result
that at the juncture when an outsider might think that utter confusion
was to ensue, every Frenchman in sight had swarmed to the task under the
direction of somebody who seemed to have made the suggestion which won
the favor of the majority.
Much has been written about the grimness of the French in this war.
Naturally they were grim in the early days; but what impresses me most
about the French Army whenever I see it is that it is entirely French.
Some people had the idea that when the French went to war they would
lose their heads, run to and fro and dance about and shout. They have
not acted so in this war and they never have acted so in any other war.
They still talk with eyes, hands and shoulders and fight with them, too.
The tide never halted for long. It flowed on with marvelous alacrity and
a seeming absence of system which soon convinced you as concealing a
very excellent system. Every man really knew where he was going; he
could think for himself, French fashion. Near the front I witnessed a
typical scene when an officer ran out and halted a soldier who was
walking across the fields by himself and demanded to know who he was and
what he was doing there.
"I am wounded, sir," was the reply, as he opened his coat and showed a
bandage. "I am going to the casualty clearing station and this is the
shortest way"--not to mention that it was a much easier way than to hug
the edge of the road in the midst of the traffic.
The battalions and transport which made up this tide of an army's rear
trying to catch up with its extreme front had a view, as the road dipped
into a valley, of the trophies which are the proof of victory. Here were
both guns and prisoners. Among the guns nicely parked you might have
your choice between the latest 77's out of Krupps' and pieces of the
vintage of the '80's. One 77 had not a blemish; another had its muzzle
broken off by the burst of a shell, its spokes slashed by
shell-fragments, and its armored shield, opened by a jagged hole, was as
crumpled as if made of tin.
Four of the old fortress type had a history. They bore the mark of their
French maker. They had fired at the Germans from Maubeuge and after
having been taken by the Germans were set to fire at the French. One
could imagine how the German staff had scattered such pieces along the
line when in stalemate warfare any kind of gun that had a barrel and
could discharge a shell would add to the volume of gunfire.
Such a ponderous piece with its heavy, old-fashioned trail and no recoil
cylinder was never meant to play any part in an army of movement. You
could picture how it had been dragged up into position back of the
German trenches and how a crew of old Landsturm gunners had been
allowed a certain number of shells a day and told off to fire them at
certain villages and crossroads, with that systematic regularity of the
German artillery system which often defeats its own purpose, as we on
the Allies' side well know.
Very likely, as often happened, the crew fired six rounds before
breakfast and eight at four o'clock in the afternoon, and the rest of
the time they might sit about playing cards. Of course, retreat was out
of the question with a gun of this sort. Yet through the twenty months
that the opposing armies had sniped at each other from the same
positions the relic had done faithful auxiliary service. The French
could move it on to some other part of the line now where no offensive
was expected and some old territorials could use it as the old
Landsturmers had used it.
All the guns in this park had been taken by the Colonial Corps, which
thinks itself a little better than the Nancy (or Iron) Corps, a view
with which the Iron Corps entirely disagreed. Scattered among the
Colonial Corps, whether on the march or in billets, were the black men.
There is no prejudice against the "chocolates," as they are called, who
provide variation and amusement, not to mention color. Most adaptable of
human beings is the negro, whom you find in all lands and engaged in all
kinds of pursuits, reflecting always the character of his surroundings.
If his French comrades charged he would charge and just as far; if they
fell back he would fall back and just as far. No Frenchman could
approach the pride of the blacks over those captured guns, which brought
grins that left only half of their ebony countenances as a background
for the whites of their eyes and teeth.
The tide of infantry, vehicles and horses flowing past must have been a
strange world to the German prisoners brought past it to the inclosures,
when they had not yet recovered from their astonishment at the
suddenness of the French whirlwind attack. The day was warm and the
ground dry, and those prisoners who were not munching French bread were
lying sardine fashion pillowing their heads on one another, a confused
mass of arms and legs, dead to the world in sleep--a green patch of
humanity with all the fight out of them, without weapons or power of
resistance, guarded by a single French soldier, while the belligerent
energy of war was on that road a hundred yards away.
"They are good Boches, now," said the French sentry; "we sha'n't have to
take that lot again."
Boches! They are rarely called anything else at the front. With both
French and English this has become the universal word for the Germans
which will last as long as the men who fought in this war survive.
Though the Germans dislike it that makes no difference. They will have
to accept it even when peace comes, for it is established. One day they
may come to take a certain pride in it as a distinction which stands for
German military efficiency and racial isolation. The professional
soldier expressing his admiration of the way the German charges, handles
his artillery, or the desperate courage of his machine gun crews may
speak of him as "Brother Boche" or the "old Boche" in a sort of amiable
recognition of the fact of how worthy he is of an enemy's steel if only
he would refrain from certain unsportsmanlike habits.
At length the blue river on the way to the front divided at a crossroad
and we were out on the plain which swept away to the bend of the Somme
in front of Péronne. Officers returning from the front when asked how
the battle was going were never too preoccupied to reply. It was
anybody's privilege to ask a question and everybody seemed to delight to
answer it. I talked with a group of men who were washing down their
bread with draughts of red wine, their first meal after they had been
through two lines of trenches. Their brigade had taken more prisoners
than it had had casualties. Their dead were few and less mourned because
they had fallen in such a glorious victory. Rattling talk gave gusto to
every mouthful.
Unlike the English, these victors were articulate; they rejoiced in
their experiences and were glad to tell about them. If one had fought it
out at close quarters with a German and got his man, he made the
incident into a dramatic episode for your edification. It was war; he
had been in a charge; he had escaped alive; he had won. He liked the
thrill of his exploit and enjoyed the telling, not allowing it to drag,
perhaps, for want of a leg. Every Frenchman is more or less of a
general, as Napoleon said, and every one knew the meaning of this
victory. He liked to make the most of it and relive it.
After having seen the trenches that the British had taken on the high
ground around Fricourt, I was the more interested to see those that the
French had taken on July 1st. The British had charged uphill against the
strongest fortifications that the Germans could devise in that chalky
subsoil so admirably suited for the purpose. Those before the French
were not so strong and were in alluvial soil on the plain. Many of the
German dugouts in front of Dompierre were in relatively as good
condition as those at Fricourt, though not so numerous or so strong;
which meant that the artillery of neither army had been able completely
to destroy them. The ground on the plain permitted of no such
advantageous tactical points for machine guns as those which had
confronted the British, in front of whom the Germans had massed immense
reserves of artillery, particularly in the Thiepval-Gommecourt sector
where the British attack had failed, besides having the valuable ridge
of Bapaume at their backs. In front of the French the Germans had
smaller forces of artillery on the plain where the bend of the Somme was
at their backs.
This is not detracting from the French success, which was complete and
masterful. The coördination of artillery and infantry must have been
perfect, as you could see when you went over the field where there were
surprisingly few French dead and the German dead, though more plentiful
than the French, were not very numerous. It seemed that the French
artillery had absolutely pinioned the Germans to their trenches and
communication trenches in the Dompierre sector and the French appearing
close under their own shells in a swift and eager wave gathered in all
the German garrison as prisoners. The ruins of the villages might have
been made either by French, British or German artillery. There is true
internationalism in artillery destruction.
It was something to see the way that French transport and reserves were
going right across the plain in splendid disregard of any German
artillery concentration. But, as usual, they knew what they were doing.
No shells fell among them while I was at the front, and out on the
plain where the battle still raged the _soixante-quinze_ batteries were
as busy as knitting-machines working some kind of magic which protected
that column from tornadoes of the same kind that they themselves were
sending. The German artillery, indeed, seemed a little demoralized.
Krump-krump-krump, they put a number of shells into a group of trees
beside the road where they mistakenly thought that there was a battery.
Swish-swish-swish came another salvo which I thought was meant for us,
but it passed by and struck where there was no target.
I have had glimpses of nearly every feature of war, but there was one in
this advance which was not included in my experiences. The French
infantry was hardly in the first-line German trench when the ditch had
been filled in and the way was open for the _soixante-quinze_ to go
forward. For the guns galloped into action just as they might have done
at manoeuvers. Some dead artillery horses near the old trench line told
the story of how a German shell must have stopped one of the guns, which
was small price to pay for so great a privilege as--let us
repeat--galloping the guns into action across the trenches in broad
daylight and keeping close to the infantry as it advanced from position
to position on the plain.
Here was a surviving bit of the glory and the sport of war, whose
passing may be one of the great influences in preventing future wars;
but there being war and the French having to win that war, why, the
spectacle of this marvelous field gun, so beloved of its alert and
skilful gunners, playing the part that was intended for it on the heels
of the enemy made a thrilling incident in the history of modern France.
The French had shown on that day that they had lost none of their
initiative of Napoleon's time, just as the British had shown that they
could be as stubborn and determined as in Wellington's.
XI
THE BRIGADE THAT WENT THROUGH
A young brigadier--A regular soldier--No heroics--How his brigade
charged--Systematically cleaning up the dugouts--"It was orders. We
did it."--The second advance--Holding on for two sleepless days and
nights--Soda water and cigars--Yorkshiremen, and a stubborn
lot--British phlegm--Five officers out of twenty who had "gone
through"--Stereotyped phrases and inexpressible emotions.
No sound of the guns was audible in this quiet French village where a
brigade out of the battle line was in rest. The few soldiers moving
about were looking in the shop windows, trying their French with the
inhabitants, or standing in small groups. Their faces were tired and
drawn as the only visible sign of the torment of fire that they had
undergone. They had met everything the German had to offer in the way of
projectiles and explosives; but before we have their story we shall have
that of the young brigadier-general who had his headquarters in one of
the houses. His was the brigade that went "through," and he was the kind
of brigadier who would send a brigade "through."
With its position in the attack of July 1st in the joint, as it were,
between the northern sector where the German line was not broken and
the southern where it was, this brigade had suffered what the charges
which failed had suffered and it had known the triumph of those which
had succeeded, at a cost in keeping with the experience.
The brigadier was a regular soldier and nothing but a soldier from head
to foot, in thought, in manner and in his decisive phrases. Nowadays,
when we seem to be drawing further and further away from versatility,
perhaps more than ever we like the soldier to be a soldier, the poet to
be a poet, the surgeon to be a surgeon; and I can even imagine this
brigadier preferring that if another man was to be a pacifist he should
be a real out and out pacifist. You knew at a glance without asking that
he had been in India and South Africa, that he was fond of sport and
probably fond of fighting. He had rubbed up against all kinds of men, as
the British officer who has the inclination may do in the course of his
career, and his straight eye--an eye which you would say had never been
accustomed to indefiniteness about anything--must have impressed the men
under his command with the confidence that he knew his business and that
they must follow him. Yet it could twinkle on occasion with a pungent
humor as he told his story, which did not take him long but left you
long a-thinking. A writer who was as good a writer as he was a soldier
if he had had the same experience could have made a book out of it; but
then he could not have been a man of action at the same time.
He made it clear at once that he had not led his brigade in person over
the parapet, or helped in person to bomb the enemy's dugouts, or
indulged in any other kind of gallery play. I do not think that all the
drawing-rooms in London or all the reception committees which receive
gallant sons in their home towns could betray him into the faintest
simulation of the pose of a hero. He was not a hero and he did not
believe in heroics. His occupation was commanding men and taking
trenches.
Not once did he utter anything approaching a boast over a feat which his
friends and superiors had expected of him. This would be "swank," as
they call it, only he would characterize it by even a stronger word. He
is the kind of officer, the working, clear-thinking type, who would earn
promotion by success at arms in a long war, while the gallery-play crowd
whose promotion and favors come by political gift and academic reports
in time of peace would be swept into the dustbin. He was simply a
capable fighter; and war is fighting.
His men had gone over the "lid" in excellent fashion, quite on time. He
had seen at once what they were in for, but he had no doubt that they
would keep on, for he had warned them to expect machine gun fire and
told them what to do in case it came. They applied the system in which
he had trained them with a coolness that won his approbation as a
directing expert--his matter-of-fact approbation in the searching
analysis of every detail, with no ecstasies about their unparalleled
gallantry. He expected them to be gallant. However, I could imagine that
if you said a word against them his eyes would flash indignation. They
were his men and he might criticize them, but no one else might except a
superior officer. The first wave reached the first-line German trench on
time, that is, half of them did; the rest, including more than half of
the officers, were down, dead or wounded, in No Man's Land in the swift
crossing of two hundred yards of open space.
He had watched their advance from the first-line British trench. Later,
when the situation demanded it, I learned that he went up to the
captured German line and on to the final objective, but this fact was
drawn out of him. It might lead to a misunderstanding; you might think
that he had been taking as much risk as his officers and men, and risk
of any kind for him was an incident of the business of managing a
brigade.
"How about the dugouts?" I asked.
This was an obvious question. The trouble on July 1st had been, as we
know, that the Germans hiding in their dugouts had rushed forth as soon
as the British curtain of fire lifted and sometimes fought the British
in the trench traverses with numbers superior. Again, they had
surrendered, only to overpower their guards, pick up rifles and man
their machine guns after the first wave had passed on, instead of filing
back across No Man's Land in the regular fashion of prisoners.
"I was looking out for that," said the brigadier, like a lawyer who has
stated his opponent's case; but other commanders had taken the same
precautions with less fortunate results. When he said that he was
"looking out for that" it meant, in his case, that he had so thoroughly
organized his men--and he was not the only brigadier who had, he was a
type--in view of every emergency in "cleaning up" that the Germans did
not outwit them. The half which reached the German trench had the
situation fully in hand and details for the dugouts assigned before they
went on. And they did go on. This was the wonderful thing.
"With your numbers so depleted, wasn't it a question whether or not it
was wise for you to attempt to carry out the full plan?"
He gave me a short look of surprise. I realized that if I had been one
of the colonels and made such a suggestion I should have drawn a curtain
of fire upon myself.
"It was orders," he said, and added: "We did it."
Yes, they did it--when commanding officers, majors and senior captains
were down, when companies without any officers were led by sergeants and
even by corporals who knew what to do, thanks to their training.
In order to reach the final objective the survivors of the first charge
which had gone two hundred yards to the first line must cover another
thousand, which must have seemed a thousand miles; but that was not for
them to consider. The spirit of the resolute man who had drilled them,
if not his presence, was urging them forward. They reached the point
where the landmarks compared with their map indicated their stopping
place--about one-quarter of the number that had left the British trench.
They had enough military sense to realize that if they tried to go back
over the same ground which they had crossed there might be less than
one-quarter of the fourth remaining. They preferred to die with their
faces rather than their backs to the enemy. No, they did not mean to
die. They meant to hold on and "beat the Boche," according to their
teaching.
As things had been going none too well with the brigade on their left
their flank was exposed. They met this condition by fortifying
themselves against enfilade in an old German communication trench and
rushing other points of advantage to secure their position. When a
German machine gun was able to sweep them, a corporal slipped up another
communication trench and bombed it out of business. Running out of bombs
of their own, they began gathering German bombs which were lying about
plentifully and threw these at the Germans. Short of rifle ammunition
they found that there was ammunition for the German rifles which had
been captured. They were not choice about their methods and neither were
the Germans in that cheek-by-jowl affair with both sides so exhausted
that a little more grit on one side struck the balance in its favor.
This medley of British and Germans in a world of personal combat shared
shell fire, heat and misery. The British sent their rocket signals up to
say that they had arrived. In two or three other instances the signals
had meant that a dozen men only had reached their objective, a force
unable to hold until reinforcements could come. Not so this time. The
little group held; they held even when the Germans got some fresh men
and attempted a counter-attack; they held until assistance came. For two
sleepless days and nights under continual fire they remained in their
dearly won position until, under cover of darkness, they were relieved.
In the most tranquil of villages the survivors looking in shop windows
and trying out their French might wonder how it was that they were
alive, though they were certain that their brigadier thought well of
them. Ask them or their officers what they thought of their brigadier
and they were equally certain of that, too. Theirs was the best
brigadier in the army. Think what this kind of confidence means to men
in such an action when their lives are the pawns of his direction!
I felt a kind of awe in the presence of one of the battalions in billet
in a warehouse, more than in the presence of prime ministers or
potentates. Most of them were blinking and mind-stiff after having slept
the clock around. They were Yorkshiremen, chiefly workers in worsted
mills and a stubborn lot.
"What did you most want to do when you got out of the fight?" I asked.
They spoke with one voice which left no question of their desires in a
one-two-three order. They wanted a wash, a shave, a good meal, and then
sleep. And personal experiences? Tom called on Jim and Jim had bayoneted
two Germans, he said; then Jim called on Bill, who had had a wonderful
experience according to Jim, though all that Bill made of it was that he
got there first with his bombs. Told among themselves the stories might
have been thrilling. Before a stranger they were mere official reports.
It had been quick work, too quick for anything but to dodge for cover
and act promptly in your effort to get the other fellow before he got
you.
Generically, they had a job to do and they did it just as they would
have done one in the factories at home. They were not so interested in
any exhibition of courage as in an encounter which had the element of
sport. Each narrator invariably returned to the subject of soda water.
The outstanding novelty of the charge to these men was the quantity of
soda water in bottles which they had found in the German dugouts. They
went on to their second objective with bottles of soda water in their
pockets and German light cigars in the corners of their mouths and
stopped to drink soda water between bombing rushes after they had
arrived. It was a hot, thirsty day.
Through the curtains of artillery fire which were continually maintained
back of their new positions supplies could not be brought up, but Boche
provisions saved the day. In fact, I think this was one of the reasons
why they felt almost kindly toward the Germans. They found the canned
meat excellent, but did not care for the "K.K." bread.